Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Beyond Gell-Mann Amnesia.

Dang it, I had been enjoying some success stepping back from Facebook, and I should probably clamp down on myself again. In and among the current blood-dancing (the recent Isla Vista disaster, this time), we have this tiresome Bore-owitzBoor-owitz Borowitz fellow, who gets shared by about half my Facebook stream every time he offers such... modern pithy wit as this:

Deep, man. Deep. (Seriously. I'm not wearing waders...)

I suppose I should be fair. The above is, in fact, a slightly more sophisticated brand of sanctimonious demagoguery than all the simple dick jokes.

Click to...engorge the stoopid.

Mind you: slightly.

But this one, I admit, got me today:

Personal weakness, plain and simple. (One can only absorb so much stoopid before it just flows over, I guess.) I just couldn't let it go:

This is what now passes for wit? Really?I
don't think this sort of thing even qualifies for simple "Gell-Mann
Amnesia effect" any more. The crusade of the True Believer requires a
more... active commitment to his ignorance than that. I
suspect that Mr. Clever Man here would not particularly appreciate
having his words used against him, but in at least one respect he is
precisely accurate. All these school shootings--each and every single
one in a posted "gun-free zone"...

It's true--nobody seems interested in
changing that.

And of course there's the tacit admission that he's just peachy-fine with the TSA/DHS approach to public safety, so long as he gets to designate the Kulaks. (A nice stylistic touch, really.)

It's a good thing he's such a decent, upstanding, ...what's the word? Oh, yeah: politically reliable person. I'm sure it helps him sleep at night. (You know, since he's not doing anything wrong...)